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This year Canada Day coincides with the beginning of the arrangement, in place now for many years, by which Good Shepherd and Mount Dennis United share in each other’s worship during the months when their clergy are on holiday. 
            I would like to use this coincidence to reflect on our identity, both national and religious.  As Canadians, we are not in the habit of looking down on other nations or peoples, and we have certainly never considered ourselves to be a master race.  But we do experience a justifiable sense of national pride, especially today, and we celebrate our difference as Canadians, especially in relation to our great neighbor to the south. 
            In the religious sphere, the arrangement between our two parishes gives us the opportunity to experience, for a month, a different style of Christian worship.  This expands our horizons, but it may also have the effect of making us more appreciative of our own tradition, when we return to worship in our own church. 
            According to the Dean of St. James Cathedral, Douglas Stoute, we are now living in a time of “post-denominationalism,” in which denominational differences have become “relatively insignificant.”  I think that news of the arrival of this post-denominational era will come as a surprise to the largest Christian denomination (almost one half of all Canadians, according to Reginald Bibby): the Roman Catholic Church.  Even while reaching out to “the separated brothers and sisters,” the Catholic Church has maintained its steadfast conviction of being the one true church of Christ, a conviction which was recently officially reiterated. 
            In the face of such invincible confessional identity on the Roman Catholic side, why would Protestant churches wish to downplay their own identities, which have grown out of their respective religious histories?  Celebrating these differences is not an expression of narrow-minded sectarianism.  Rather, it is a grateful recognition of the gifts which God has given us as Christian communities. 
            Some time ago the Presbyterian Church took the occasion of the anniversary of church union to publish an article in their monthly magazine which recalled the reasons behind the decision of those parishes which stayed out of church union.  These reasons were not sectarian; there was no lack of appreciation of the values of union.  But it was thought that in a United Church certain values of the Presbyterian system, especially in the area of governance, would be lost. 
            The visible unity of Christians is certainly desirable, but it is not the only value, and churches with long and rich religious traditions should not be expected to sacrifice everything for the sake of it.  The New Testament evidence shows us that the Christian movement has been marked by great diversity right from the beginning, and it is hard to see any theological reason which would compel us to embrace a greater unity than existed in New Testament times. 
            I confess that in the past Anglicans have frequently been smug in talking about what Dean Stoute refers to ironically as “our incomparable religion.”  But there is nothing smug about the straightforward confession with which the late Bishop Neill begins his great book, Anglicanism.  The Anglican Communion, Neill writes, “is a fellowship in which it is possible for me to proclaim all that I believe to be true, and in which I am not required to teach anything which I believe to be untrue.”
            I wish that all Christians, Protestant and Catholic, could make this statement.  But until that day comes, let us celebrate and preserve our differences, both national and religious.  They have been bought at a great price. 

July 1, 2007

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